Gastón Acurio Velarde

Gastón Rodrigo Acurio Velarde was a Cusco-born civil engineer who helped build Acción Popular with Fernando Belaúnde Terry, ran the Ministry of Fomento y Obras Públicas in the mid-1960s, and sat in Peru's Senate through three elections until the 1992 congressional closure. He died in Lima on 7 September 2026 at the age of 95. His son, the chef Gastón Acurio Jaramillo, announced the death that day with a long social-media farewell that Peruvian outlets reprinted in full. This profile is the engineer and senator. It is not the chef, and it is not tennis player Ignacio Buse, his grandson.

He was born in Cusco on 25 December 1930, the son of Rómulo Acurio de Olarte and Hortencia Velarde Valencia. Press and family often called him Don Gastón Acurio Velarde, an honorific rather than a separate published nickname. He attended primary school at Colegio San Francisco de Asís in Cusco and secondary school at Colegio Nacional de Ciencias. He studied civil engineering at the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (UNI) in Lima and graduated in 1953 with a thesis titled "Soluciones a la comunidad de Cherequec," a public-works problem statement that already pointed toward state service rather than private practice alone. Spanish Wikipedia once phrased the UNI year oddly, as if he entered in 1953 with the thesis. English Wikipedia, El Comercio, Caretas, and La República treat 1953 as the graduation year, and that is the date used here.

At UNI in the late 1950s he served as student general secretary and met Belaúnde, then a lecturer critical of the dictatorship of the period. In later remarks quoted by La República from an Expreso interview, Acurio Velarde recalled student protests and early talks with Javier Alva Orlandini about forming a party that became Acción Popular. After graduating he took engineering work in Trujillo, helped organise Acción Popular in La Libertad, and married Jesusa Jaramillo Rázuri there. They had five children: María Cecilia, María Lucía (also called Lucía), María Eugenia, María Beatriz, and Gastón, the youngest and only son. La República also gives the son the middle name Alvaro. The wedding date was not published in the sources consulted.

Spanish Wikipedia records him as Acción Popular general secretary for the department of La Libertad from 1960 to 1963, then national general secretary from 1963 to 1965. In 1963 he ran for the Chamber of Deputies on the Acción Popular-Demócrata Cristiana alliance and was not elected. On 15 September 1965 President Belaúnde named him Minister of Fomento y Obras Públicas, succeeding Carlos Morales Macchiavello. In that portfolio, Spanish Wikipedia and later obituaries credit the construction of Residencial San Felipe in Jesús María and the start of the Carretera Marginal de la Selva, later known as the Fernando Belaúnde Terry highway. He left the ministry on 8 September 1967, replaced by Enrique Tola Mendoza. A Deseret News photograph dated 6 November 1965 shows him, the man on the left, with Antoine R. Ivins. That archival picture is of the minister, not of his son.

After the military governments, democracy's return brought him into the Senate. He was elected for Acción Popular in 1980, re-elected in 1985, and elected again in 1990. Spanish Wikipedia notes the 1990 win on the Frente Democrático ticket. The documented term windows are 27 July 1980 to 26 July 1985, 27 July 1985 to 26 July 1990, and from 27 July 1990 until Congress closed. As senator he sat on budget and investigative commissions, including work on Petroperú's economic-financial situation and the Hospitales-SVIRES inquiry. The self-coup of 5 April 1992 closed Congress and ended that third term. He opposed the Fujimori regime, tried and failed to return in the 1995 parliamentary election (Spanish Wikipedia cites 3,608 votes), then stepped back from front-line politics while remaining, according to El Comercio and Infobae reporting, a lifelong member of Acción Popular's political committee.

Away from the chamber he was remembered as a father who measured pride in quiet habits. El Comercio and Caretas retell how, around 1994, he counted cars parked outside Astrid & Gastón and rival restaurants so he could know how his son's new restaurant was doing without asking for sales figures. The chef later said those walks, and that egalitarian street manners of greeting everyone the same way, shaped how he looked at Peru. Spanish Wikipedia lists later residence in San Isidro, Lima. The Federación Peruana de Tenis, consoling grandson Ignacio Buse after the death, noted that Acurio Velarde had played tennis throughout his life at Club Lawn Tennis de la Exposición. Ignacio Buse is the son of María Beatriz Acurio and Hans Buse Thorne.

Institutional farewells came quickly. Andina and El Peruano carried the son's announcement on 7 September 2026. Congress posted condolences. Acción Popular called him a founder and historic leader. Edmundo del Águila Morote, quoted by Infobae via El Comercio, called him a first-line Belaúnde leader who spoke Quechua and treated politics as service: it is for serving, not for serving oneself. In 2011 the Congress of the Republic awarded him a Diploma of Honor with other former legislators for parliamentary work and defence of democracy. CanalB reported that honour. English Wikipedia summarises a related congressional honour around parliament's 189th anniversary. No other civil decorations were verified in the sources consulted.

He died in Lima on 7 September 2026, aged 95. No cause was published in Andina, El Peruano, RPP, Gestión, Infobae, Caretas, El Comercio, CanalB, or Exitosa. An Infobae headline said 96. That headline conflicts with Infobae's own birth date of 25 December 1930 and with Andina, Wikipedia, RPP, Gestión, Caretas, and El Peruano, which say 95. This profile uses 95. Resting place, church, and cemetery were not stated. The public record that remains is the engineer who helped found a party, built housing and jungle roads as minister, held three Senate mandates, and, in his son's words, passed through power "sin mancharse." Andina's wire has the typo "sin marcharse"; the fuller reprints in RPP, El Montonero, and Infobae use "sin mancharse."